


here is the deepest secret nobody knows

by Anonymous



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Introspection, No Incest, basically just five's thoughts on vanya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 16:46:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18286268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Five has always thought of Vanya as the strongest of the Umbrella Academy, even before he'd known she has powers.





	here is the deepest secret nobody knows

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows: Five thinks Vanya is the strongest of them all.

Oh, they all have their powers, of course. Number one can easily throw a man twice his size through a window. Number two can hit anything he aims for. Number three can have anyone do her bidding with only a few words. Number four can commune with the dead. Ben can summon tentacles from another dimension.

But Vanya? Vanya has nothing. Vanya is ordinary, in every sense of the word, and yet—she is the strongest person Five knows.

She is normal. She has no powers. She is constantly ignored, constantly neglected in favor of her more powerful siblings. She is left out of family pictures. She is treated as an outsider, as though she hadn’t grown up with the rest of them. She is constantly beaten down, and she does not have the power to fight back—does not have the _will_ to fight back.

_(“She used to cry when we stepped on ants.”)_

But she is kind.

She has a kindness born from years of suffering, from years of neglect. She has an intellect born from years of being the only ordinary one in the household, the only one does not have powers to rely on to make her way out of trouble. And above all, she has a deep and powerful love for her siblings that does not fade no matter how many times they brush past her.

He knows that Vanya is ordinary, that she has no powers, that there is nothing extraordinary about her. And Five still thinks, sometimes, that it’s strange to think of his only ordinary sibling as the strongest. But then he sees the way she always picks herself up when Luther accidentally shoulder-checks her in the hall and knocks her down; he sees the way she smiles past the ache he _knows_ is in her heart when her words are ignored yet again; and he wonders why anyone would think that he is so narcissistic as to think himself the strongest, when Vanya could outlast them all.

(But Five is pragmatic. He is realistic. And he knows, with certainty, that all things have a breaking point; and he can’t help but fear what will happen when Vanya finally reaches hers.)


End file.
